NASA Must Go Where No Man Will Ever Go: Europa

X Marks the Center of the Deep Space Network in JPL's Mission Control CenterGreg Autry

Visiting the Mission Control room of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I was shown a spot that former JPL Director Charles Elachi declared to be “The Center of the Universe.” It seemed to be a dubious assertion given the relative nature of space navigation, but that particular point in space commands a view across our solar system and beyond. Screens display astounding images and invaluable scientific information from the myriad of spacecraft, rovers and landers connected to NASA's Deep Space Network. At my feet lay a marker inscribed, “Dare Mighty Things.” This motivational quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s is an understatement. JPL routinely achieves mighty things and it does that on a tiny budget.

In his inaugural speech, President Trump called for “unlocking the mysteries of space” and his 2018 budget proposal reflects that commitment. While other departments received steep cuts, NASA’s budget remained at about $19 billion. To be clear, that’s less than one half of one percent of federal spending and JPL garners less than a tenth of that sliver but it is enough to begin an ambitious search for life in the ice-covered ocean of Europa. Europa Clipper will launch in 2022 on a mission to survey Jupiter’s sixth moon. However, a follow-on lander mission was conspicuously missing from the budget and media reports suggested that it had been cancelled.

Not to worry, the Europa Lander is a personal favorite of John Culberson, Chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) Appropriations subcommittee which oversees NASA’s funding. This conservative Texas Republican has a sincere passion for space science. I have found him to be deeply informed on the science, engineering requirements and cost constraints of space exploration. Scientists, engineers and directors at JPL hold him in the highest regard and jokingly refer to him as “Europa Mission Director.” Culberson’s connection to Southern California’s robot builders is also remarkably free of political self-interest. This Congressman doesn’t view space exploration as a pork barrel jobs program. His district borders Houston, home to the Johnson Human Spaceflight Center, 1,500 miles from JPL. Culberson really wants NASA to deliver answers to fundamental questions about our place in the universe. The existence of alien life is the biggest of those questions and the Chairman is fond of saying “I’ve made sure that the Europa Mission is one thing that NASA is required to do.”

Before the Lander, the Clipper Must Go.

Placing a delicate instrument on an alien world, millions of miles from Earth is no small feat. Despite an impressive string of successes on Mars, the team at JPL still refer to an Entry, Descent and Landing phase as Seven Minutes of Terror. During an EDL, they huddle in mission control eating “lucky peanuts,” and wait for a faint signal to travel minutes back to Earth and tell them that years of work on a lander have not been in vain.

Finding a safe and scientifically valuable landing site is the first prerequisite to a lander mission. Mars has been so toughly mapped by NASA and international orbiters that you can cruise the Red Planet using Google Earth or the navigation system in your Tesla. Our last look at Europa was more than a dozen years ago. The Galileo probe’s limited inspection and 25m resolution was insufficient for site selection.

Europa Clipper’s primary mission is to conduct that survey. The orbiter will also analyze geyser-like plumes of warm water that jet from cracks in the moon’s ice shell, a phenomena NASA just confirmed with a special announcement on Thursday. Europa is located within the heart of Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts and its surface is exposed to a constant bombardment of high energy particles that eat electronics and make future human exploration unlikely. Clipper will orbit Jupiter and dip briefly through the high-radiation zone for survey passes of Europa.

Speed Counts

Getting the Europa Lander in place before Clipper fails is preferable, as it will serve as a backup to the primary communications relay system on the lander’s carrier spacecraft. Delaying a lander for many years also carries the risk that a previously desirable location may have changed. Though Hubble data revealed on Thursday shows eruptions at the same location a few years apart, Europa’ surface is dynamic. Its shell cracks and shifts under tidal forces generated by the moon’s slightly eccentric orbit around Jupiter and the influence of its neighbor moon, Io.

Europa’s lack of atmosphere presents another challenge. JPL’s Martian probes shed more than 90% of their velocity using the Red Planet’s thin air, but parachutes and heat shield are useless in the vacuum above Europa. The Europa Lander will use the gravitation of Jupiter’s other moons to slow itself down to orbital speeds, but a great deal of momentum must be overcome with rocket thrusters burning a lot of fuel. That makes for a very significant delivery system. The proposed Europa Lander weighs in at about 1,100 pounds and will require another 16 tons of supporting rocketry, carrier craft and fuel. That makes it the largest payload ever sent beyond the Moon.

The cavernous high bay that will hold SLS before launchGreg Autry

Space Launch System Finds Its Purpose

How will JPL deliver 16 tons to Jupiter? The go-to, existing, heavy launch system, Delta IV, is scheduled to be discontinued about the time the lander might be ready to go and it doesn’t have the power. Anticipated new heavy-lift commercial launchers from SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin could do it, but would require a series of gravity assists visits to Venus and Earth and that would delay the landing for years.

Time is money as each year spent in transit adds to mission operational costs and increases risk. JPL keeps mission specialists on the payroll and can’t just call up a recruiting agency and hire another group of Europa mission experts when the vehicle finally creeps to Jupiter. As Barry Goldstein, the Europa Clipper Project Manager put it, “Not going to Venus on the way to Jupiter would make our lives a lot easier.”

Luckily, NASA has been building a giant rocket fit for just such a journey. With the powerful Space Launch System (SLS), the Clipper could fly directly to Jupiter in just 2.5 years. SLS can throw the heavy lander into Jovian space with only a single flyby of Earth, saving three years over other options. While I have previously criticized SLS for lacking a mission, Europa offers a perfect justification for that big rocket. Getting to Europa fast has real value on several levels and using the SLS for the Clipper and the first Europa lander mission is truly expedient.

The discoveries NASA announced on Thursday suggests there will be follow-up missions to the Ocean Worlds of the outer solar system. Increasing the cadence of SLS flights will actually drive down its price per flight by spreading fixed costs over more launches. The increasing capabilities of their entrepreneurial competitors should also motivate the SLS team to keep their performance high and operational costs in check. Access to deep space will be faster, cheaper and more common and space science will enter a new age and something wonderful will happen.

JPL MIssion ControlGreg Autry

Oh, The Places We'll Go!

Chairman Culberson, a devout Christian, is convinced that God did not cover the night sky with stars for mere ornamentation. He gifted us with a vast universe full of life and tasked human beings with exploring it. Culberson is convinced that the day life is discovered – and he is very sure Europa is where that will happen – “the world will stop.”

The Chairman is right! Humanity lacks a predetermined dogma to deal with such a revelation. We will all have to pause and think. It’s hard to imagine a creator that seeded a distant frozen moon with life we would never find. Discovering life on Europa would make it clear that humans are endowed with the capabilities to answer the fundamental question of existence and that if there is a God, he expects us to pursue that knowledge. In this context, our investments in science and engineering offer the public more than interesting facts and modern conveniences. We are funding transcendental insights.

Kevin Hand, Deputy Project Scientist for the Europa Mission notes that “not finding life on Europa” would be a very significant result in itself. The work of Hand and other astrobiologists suggests that Europa’s warm salt water, effused with energy and minerals from its core is similar to Earth’s deepest ocean places and ideal for the creation and sustenance of life. If Europa is found to be sterile – devoid of microorganisms and organic molecules created by life – we are forced to consider that life may be a very rare occurrence. That, combined with the ominous radio silence observed by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) should renew our commitment to preserving Earth’s precious biosphere as well as expanding our presence. Elon Musk’s mission of making humans a multi-planetary species becomes all the more urgent if we find that we are unique. Either answer about life, abundance or rarity, should drive us forward into deep space.

Such a transcendent moment is worth the substantial cost of this mission. Elachi feels this is exactly the sort of mighty thing JPL should be daring and says, “I’m in agreement with Congress. Looking for current life on Europa is one of the most important things we could do.” The funding for Clipper prompted the Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, to remark, “I’m very excited about the support for science from this administration. Finding life on other worlds is a core mission for SMD." Let’s hope Congress goes the extra few million miles and get's JPL’s new director, Mike Watkins, a lander that will dare this mighty thing.

I research the impact of government policy on emerging industries and teach entrepreneurship at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California. I served on the Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for NASA and held a tempora...